Across the Zodiac (34 page)

"Thoughts he sends to each planet,
Uranus, Venus, and Mars;
Soars to the Centre to span it,
Numbers the infinite Stars."

Courthope's Paradise of Birds

An hour after sunrise next morning. Esmo, his son, and our host
accompanied us to the vessel in which we were to make the principal
part of our journey. We were received by an officer of the royal
Court, who was to accompany us during the rest of our journey, and
from whom, Esrno assured me, I might obtain the fullest information
regarding the various objects of interest, to visit which we had
adopted an unusual and circuitous course. We embarked on a gulf
running generally from east to west, about midway between the northern
tropic and the arctic circle. As this was the summer of the northern
hemisphere, we should thus enjoy a longer day, and should not suffer
from the change of climate. After taking leave of our friends, we went
down below to take possession of the fore part of the vessel, which
was assigned as our exclusive quarters. Immediately in front of the
machine-room, which occupied the centre of the vessel, were two
cabins, about sixteen feet square, reaching from side to side. Beyond
these, opening out of a passage running along one side, were two
smaller cabins about eight feet long. All these apartments were
furnished and ornamented with the luxury and elegance of chambers in
the best houses on shore. In the foremost of the larger cabins were a
couple of desks, and three or four writing or easy chairs. In the
outer cabin nearest to the engine-room, and entered immediately by the
ladder descending from the deck, was fixed a low central table. In all
we found abundance of those soft exquisitely covered and embroidered
cushions which in Mars, as in Oriental countries, are the most
essential and most luxurious furniture. The officer had quarters in
the stern of the vessel, which was an exact copy of the fore part. But
the first of these rooms was considered as public or neutral ground.
Leaving Eveena below, I went on deck to examine, before she started,
the construction of the vessel. Her entire length was about one
hundred and eighty feet, her depth, from the flat deck to the wide
keel, about one half of her breadth; the height of the cabins not much
more than eight feet; her draught, when most completely lightened, not
more than four feet. Her electric machinery drew in and drove out with
great force currents of water which propelled her with a speed greater
than that afforded by the most powerful paddles. It also pumped in or
out, at whatever depth, the quantity of water required as ballast, not
merely to steady the vessel, but to keep her in position on the
surface or to sink her to the level at which the pilot might choose to
sail. At either end was fixed a steering screw, much resembling the
tail-fin of a fish, capable of striking sideways, upwards, or
downwards, and directing our course accordingly.

Ergimo, our escort, had not yet reached middle age, but was a man of
exceptional intellect and unusual knowledge. He had made many voyages,
and had occupied for some time an important official post on one of
those Arctic continents which are inhabited only by the hunters
employed in collecting the furs and skins furnished exclusively by
these lands. The shores of the gulf were lofty, rocky, and
uninteresting. It was difficult to see any object on shore from the
deck of the vessel, and I assented, therefore, without demur, after
the first hour of the voyage, to his proposal that the lights,
answering to our hatches, should be closed, and that the vessel should
pursue her course below the surface. This was the more desirable that,
though winds and storms are, as I have said, rare, these long and
narrow seas with their lofty shores are exposed to rough currents,
atmospheric and marine, which render a voyage on the surface no more
agreeable than a passage in average weather across the Bay of Biscay.
After descending I was occupied for some time in studying, with
Ergimo's assistance, the arrangement of the machinery, and the simple
process by which electric force is generated in quantities adequate to
any effort at a marvellously small expenditure of material. In this
form the Martialists assert that they obtain without waste all the
potential energy stored in ...
(About half a score lines, or two pages
of an ordinary octavo volume like this, are here illegible.)
She
(Eveena?) was somewhat pale, but rose quickly, and greeted me with a
smile of unaffected cheerfulness, and was evidently surprised as well
as pleased that I was content to remain alone with her, our
conversation turning chiefly on the lessons of last night. Our time
passed quickly till, about the middle of the day, we were startled by
a shock which, as I thought, must be due to our having run aground or
struck against a rock. But when I passed into the engine-room, Ergimo
explained that the pilot was nowise in fault. We had encountered one
of those inconveniences, hardly to be called perils, which are
peculiar to the waters of Mars. Though animals hostile or dangerous to
man have been almost extirpated upon the land, creatures of a type
long since supposed to be extinct on Earth still haunt the depths of
the Martial seas; and one of these—a real sea-serpent of above a
hundred feet in length and perhaps eight feet in circumference—had
attacked our vessel, entangling the steering screw in his folds and
trying to crush it, checking, at the same time, by his tremendous
force the motion of the vessel.

"We shall soon get rid of him, though," said Ergimo, as I followed him
to the stern, to watch with great interest the method of dealing with
the monster, whose strange form was visible through a thick crystal
pane in the stern-plate. The asphyxiator could not have been used
without great risk to ourselves. But several tubes, filled with a soft
material resembling cork, originally the pith of a Martial cane of
great size, were inserted in the floor, sides, and deck of the vessel,
and through the centre of each of these passed a strong metallic wire
of great conducting power. Two or three of those in the stern were
placed in contact with some of the electric machinery by which the
rudder was usually turned, and through them were sent rapid and
energetic currents, whose passage rendered the covering of the wires,
notwithstanding their great conductivity, too hot to be touched. We
heard immediately a smothered sound of extraordinary character, which
was, in truth, no other than a scream deadened partly by the water,
partly by the thick metal sheet interposed between us and the element.
The steering screw was set in rapid motion, and at first revolving
with some difficulty, afterwards moving faster and more regularly,
presently released us. Its rotation was stopped, and we resumed our
course. The serpent had relaxed his folds, stunned by the shock, but
had not disentangled himself from the screw, till its blades, no
longer checked by the tremendous force of his original grasp, striking
him a series of terrific blows, had broken the vertebrae and paralysed
if not killed the monstrous enemy.

At each side of the larger chambers and of the engine-room were fixed
small thick circular windows, through which we could see from time to
time the more remarkable objects in the water. We passed along one
curious submarine bank, built somewhat like our coral rocks, not by
insects, however, but by shellfish, which, fixing themselves as soon
as hatched on the shells below or around them, extended slowly upward
and sideways. As each of these creatures perished, the shell, about
half the size of an oyster, was filled with the same sort of material
as that of which its hexagonic walls were originally formed, drawn in
by the surrounding and still living neighbours; and thus, in the
course of centuries, were constructed solid reefs of enormous extent.
One of these had run right across the gulf, forming a complete bridge,
ceasing, however, within some five feet of the surface; but on this a
regular roadway had been constructed by human art and mechanical
labour, while underneath, at the usual depth of thirty feet, several
tunnels had been pierced, each large enough to admit the passage of a
single vessel of the largest size. At every fourth hour our vessel
rose to the surface to renew her atmosphere, which was thus kept purer
than that of an ordinary Atlantic packet between decks, while the
temperature was maintained at an agreeable point by the warmth
diffused from the electric machinery.

On the sixth day of our voyage, we reached a point where the Gulf of
Serocasfe divides, a sharp jutting cape or peninsula parting its
waters. We took the northern branch, about fifteen miles in width, and
here, rising to the surface and steering a zigzag course from coast to
coast, I was enabled to see something of the character of this most
extraordinary strait. Its walls at first were no less than 2000 feet
in height, so that at all times we were in sight, so to speak, of
land. A road had been cut along the sea-level, and here and there
tunnels ascending through the rock rendered this accessible from the
plateau above. The strata, as upon Earth, were of various character,
none of them very thick, seldom reproducing exactly the geology of our
own planet, but seldom very widely deviating in character from the
rocks with which we are acquainted. The lowest were evidently of the
same hard, fused, compressed character as those which our terminology
calls plutonic. Above these were masses which, bike the carboniferous
strata of Earth, recalled the previous existence of a richer but less
highly organised form of vegetation than at present exists anywhere
upon the surface. Intermixed with these were beds of the peculiar
submarine shell-rock whose formation I have just described. Above
these again come strata of diluvial gravel, and about 400 feet below
the surface rocks that bore evident traces of a glacial period. As we
approached the lower end of the gulf the shores sloped constantly
downward, and where they were no more than 600 feet in height I was
able to distinguish an upper stratum of some forty yards in depth,
preserving through its whole extent traces of human life and even of
civilisation. This implied, if fairly representative of the rest of
the planet's crust, an existence of man upon its surface ten, twenty,
or even a hundred-fold longer than he is supposed to have enjoyed upon
Earth. About noon on the seventh day we entered the canal which
connects this arm of the gulf with the sea of the northern temperate
zone. It varies in height from 400 to 600 feet, in width from 100 to
300 yards, its channel never exceeds 20 feet in depth, Ergimo
explained that the length had been thought to render a tunnel
unsuitable, as the ordinary method of ventilation could hardly have
been made to work, and to ventilate such a tunnel through shafts sunk
to so great a depth would have been almost as costly as the method
actually adopted. A much smaller breadth might have been thought to
suffice, and was at first intended; but it was found that the current
in a narrow channel, the outer sea being many inches higher than the
water of the gulf, would have been too rapid and violent for safety.
The work had occupied fifteen Martial years, and had been opened only
for some eight centuries. The water was not more than twenty feet in
depth; but the channel was so perfectly scoured by the current that no
obstacle had ever arisen and no expense had been incurred to keep it a
clear. We entered the Northern sea where a bay ran up some half dozen
miles towards the end of the gulf, shortening the canal by this
distance. The bay itself was shallow, the only channel being scarcely
wider than the canal, and created or preserved by the current setting
in to the latter; a current which offered a very perceptible
resistance to our course, and satisfied me that had the canal been no
wider than the convenience of navigation would have required in the
absence of such a stream, its force would have rendered the work
altogether useless. We crossed the sea, holding on in the same
direction, and a little before sunset moored our vessel at the wharf
of a small harbour, along the sides of which was built the largest
town of this subarctic landbelt, a village of some fifty houses named
Askinta.

Ergimo landed to make arrangements for the chase, to witness which was
the principal object of this deviation from what would otherwise have
been our most convenient course. Not only would it be possible to take
part in the pursuit of the wild fauna of the continent, but I also
hoped to share in a novel sport, not unlike a whale-hunt in Baffin's
Bay. A large inland sea, occupying no inconsiderable part of the area
of this belt, lay immediately to the northward, and one wide arm
thereof extended within a few miles of Askirita, a distance which,
notwithstanding the interposition of a mountain range, might be
crossed in a couple of hours. One or two days at most would suffice
for both adventures. I had not yet mentioned my intention to Eveena.
During the voyage I had been much alone with her, and it was then only
that our real acquaintance began. Till then, however close our
attachment, we were, in knowledge of each other's character and
thought, almost as strangers. While her painful timidity had in some
degree worn off, her anxious and watchful deference was even more
marked than before. True to the strange ideas derived chiefly from her
training, partly from her own natural character, she was the more
careful to avoid giving the slightest pain or displeasure, as she
ceased to fear that either would be immediately and intentionally
visited upon herself. She evidently thought that on this account there
was the greater danger lest a series of trivial annoyances, unnoticed
at the time, might cool the affection she valued so highly. Diffident
of her own charms, she knew how little hold the women of her race
generally have on the hearts of men after the first fever of passion
has cooled. It was difficult for her to realise that her thoughts or
wishes could truly interest me, that compliance with her inclinations
could be an object, or that I could be seriously bent on teaching her
to speak frankly and openly. But as this new idea became credible and
familiar, her unaffected desire to comply with all that was expected
from her drew out her hitherto undeveloped powers of conversation, and
enabled me day by day to appreciate more thoroughly the real
intelligence and soundness of judgment concealed at first by her
shyness, and still somewhat obscured by her childlike simplicity and
absolute inexperience. In the latter respect, however, she was, of
course, at the less disadvantage with a stranger to the manners and
life of her world. A more perfectly charming companion it would have
been difficult to desire and impossible to find. If at first I had
been secretly inclined to reproach her with exaggerated timidity, it
became more and more evident that her personal fears were due simply
to that nervous susceptibility which even men of reputed courage have
often displayed in situations of sudden and wholly unfamiliar peril.
Her tendency to overrate all dangers, not merely as they affected
herself, but as they might involve others, and above all her husband,
I ascribed to the ideas and habits of thought now for so many
centuries hereditary among a people in whom the fear of
annihilation—and the absence of all the motives that impel men on
earth to face danger and death with calmness, or even to enjoy the
excitement of deadly peril—have extinguished manhood itself.